Carbon fiber is one of the most prized construction materials available to a parts designer. It is also among the most expensive due to the painstakingly tedious process of molding or winding it. This week, at the SolidWorks World 2014 conference in San Diego, the first 3D printer for carbon fiber was unveiled, leaving makers and hobbyists around the world drooling.

No longer just for “impossible to machine” or waifish parts where material characteristics were the design feature needed rather that microstructural strength, 3D manufacturing now deliver on a dime. It is no surprise then, that manufacturers with million-dollar multi-function machines, now want a 3D print head to fill one of the many open spots in their on board tool-changers.

The Xbox One is an impressive piece of hardware. Sure, the games look sharp, but the console is pleasing in and of itself. Once a product hits shelves, it’s easy to forget that people had to design it from scratch. From toasters to game consoles, the devices we use every day have gone through countless iterations, and an absurd number of man-hours are spent perfecting these technological masterpieces. It’s worth taking note of just how many revisions products go through before they see the light of day, and Microsoft’s Carl Ledbetter wants you to know just how much work was put into the Xbox One.

Adobe is about to try to make 3D printing a whole-lot easier and more predictable with a free update to Photoshop CC that verifies and fixes models before they are sent to the printer. It has also added a cool new perspective correction tool and other features.

As 2013 draws to a close, I want to highlight the year’s 10 most important tech and science firsts. The list is in no particular order, because it’s impossible to compare breakthroughs that impact wildly different domains. Some of these firsts are awesome intermediary steps towards the realization of an amazing end goal, and some are fully developed technologies that were launched this year and are already changing the world. The one common thread that weaves these 10 stories together is that they’re all incredibly significant to the future of technology and science and humankind — and remember, you read about them first on ExtremeTech.

Why is a keyboard shaped like a keyboard? Better yet, why are all of the letters of the alphabet, numbers, and some punctuation, arranged in four slightly diagonal rows of keys — and more importantly, why has the layout of the keyboard gone almost unchanged in 100 years? There must be a really good reason, right? Wrong.

A team from Harvard is working with special nanoparticle inks that could make 3D printing batteries and other components a reality. This might be the push 3D printing needs to kick off that manufacturing revolution we’ve been hearing so much about.

The world’s first 3D printed gun has come and gone. It fired a shot, but was made of plastic and broke down very quickly. Further revisions of the gun had it last a little longer but the weapons weren’t permanent, and thus unreliable. Now, 3D printing and rapid prototyping company Solid Concepts has improved upon the plastic gun, and 3D printed the world’s first metal gun.

Titanium is roughly half the weight of steel and twice the strength of aluminum. The downside is it can cost 10 times as much as aluminum per pound and up to 40 times that of carbon steel. In an effort to find a better way to extract titanium, the US Energy Department has just funded a group at Case Western Reserve (CWR) to the tune of $675,000.